


Castles

by unkissed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 05:22:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9477407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: The Draco you knew in your head was still seventeen-years-old, with haunted eyes and pallid skin, both the sickly color of constant terror.  Beneath the hollowness and bone, somewhere buried deep within organs that twisted with dread and anxiety, was something striking and lovely.  No matter how broken he had become, no matter how much weight he’d lost, and despite the ugly scars and dark stains he had acquired, he was always beautiful to you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Poet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2286726) by [ColorfulStabwound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorfulStabwound/pseuds/ColorfulStabwound). 



> I started writing this YEARS ago, never finished it, so never thought to post it. But maybe if I post what I have so far, it'll force me to finish it. This story was inspired by "Poet" in The Death of Draco Malfoy series by ColorfulStabwound.
> 
> Love, gratitude, and black-heart emoji's to my bestie, ColorfulStabwound, who showed me how gorgeous Draco/Theodore could be all those years ago.

You knew the moment he walked back into your life that you never ceased to love Draco Malfoy.

 

He made your heart stop when he found you in Morocco. And that was before you even recognized him.

 

 

The Draco you knew in your head was still seventeen-years-old, with haunted eyes and pallid skin, both the sickly color of constant terror. Beneath the hollowness and bone, somewhere buried deep within organs that twisted with dread and anxiety, was something striking and lovely. No matter how broken he had become, no matter how much weight he’d lost, and despite the ugly scars and dark stains he had acquired, he was always beautiful to you.

 

This is the picture of Draco burned into your memories that you had carried for years – the way he looked the last time you had seen him, the night before he fled the scene of Professor Dumbmledore’s murder. This is the mental picture you had taken with you, when you left England and the impending war behind you, a few weeks after that terrible incident upon the lightning-struck tower.

 

 

The man that entered the café in Morocco was not the boy in the picture. Which is why you didn’t know who he was at first.

 

 

~//~

 

 

_Marrakesh, 1 March 2001_

_There’s something about North Africa that makes a man feel like he is truly alive. Perhaps it’s the heat and the sweat and constantly being just on the edge between discomfort and pleasure that remind him that he is a corporeal being._

_It is so unlike London, where a man can lose himself in his head while the climate and modern conveniences sustain him without any thought or effort on his part._

_Here, in cities like Casablanca, Algiers, Tripoli, Cairo, comfort is not a given, but something he actually has to work at. Comfort is hard to come by, and afforded to those who have money or low standards, of which I have both. I can just as easily find pleasure in sleeping on a cot in a tent with a vast canopy of desert stars above me, as I can find pleasure in luxuriating in a hotel suite on plush, white linens. More often than not, I prefer the former, for life is so much more exciting without walls._

_Being in a city where the language is unfamiliar and musical, where the sheer volume of humanity is on constant, colorful display, a man can feel completely unfettered – he is free to get lost, to choose a path strewn with bazaars and cafes, and to find himself._

_It was not on a pristine beach in Southeast Asia, or in a lush rainforest of Central America, or even in a jeweled city of twinkling lights in Europe, where I liberated my soul - But here, in North Africa, where I can finally say that I am a free man. I no longer define myself by my past. I’ve let go of my past. And so I no longer have to run away from it._

_That’s the difference between this excursion and all my others – I’m not running away from life anymore. I’m living it to its fullest._

_My past, and all the pain, all the unfulfilled desires, the unrequited love, the bitterness and anger – it is but a memory._

 

This is the part in your journal where your pen, less conspicuous than a self-inking quill amongst muggles, hesitates on the paper. You start to form the words in your head but you’re afraid to write them down. Because you never lie in your journal. You lie to yourself all the time. But your journal is a place for the truth, no matter how ugly. And you will never immortalize your lies on paper.

 

What you want to write is, _I’ve let go of those grey eyes that used to haunt me, and Draco Malfoy is just another memory to put to rest with the others._ But you aren’t sure that you are being completely honest. So you write a few more sentences about _freedom_ and _independence_ and not being _tied to any one soul but my own_ , and blah, blah, blah.

 

Then the squeaky door opens at the front of the café, in which you are a temporary installment. It’s really just a rusty screen on noisy hinges with a little bell at the top. The sound of an opening door, no matter how disruptive, would not normally rouse you from the focused state you lock yourself into when you’re writing. But a navy blue blur comes into the very edges of your peripheral vision, and something about the presence of that blur compels you to look up from your journal.

 

A man with a pale complexion, untouched by the sun, wearing a full tailored suit is not something you see very often in these parts, away from the luxury hotels, absent of an entourage. So you take notice. And he’s attractive enough that you don’t immediately dismiss him in favor of minding your own damn business and getting on with your writing. Your heart does that pathetic little flutter thing it’s prone to do whenever a strikingly handsome fellow looks your way. And he _is_ looking right at you.

 

There is no doubt that the tailor who made that suit for him took pleasure in measuring each elegant line of his lithe form by hand, for it fits him intimately and he is absolutely stunning. He carries his pretty head like he’s royalty, like he’s aware of how gorgeous he is but is just tactful enough to feign modesty. And he doesn’t appear to perspire beneath the layers of expensive fabric. He’s tall, and handsome and so very blond, and _OH MY GODS!_

 

Amidst shamelessly checking him out, you realize that you know him. And he’s looking at you because he knows you. Because he’s completely out of context and is all grown up, it had taken much longer for you to recognize Draco Malfoy than it should have. And when you do, it is so mentally and emotionally jarring that you are actually indignant.

 

How dare he insert himself back into your life when you were just about to write him off for good? How dare he just show up after a million years and render all the things you’d just written in your journal null and void? Who the fuck does he think he is, finding you in a place where you meant to get lost?

 

You leap from your seat and rush over to him with a furrowed brow and take him firmly by the arm.

 

“What are you doing here?” you hiss angrily.

 

It is hardly the reunion either of you imagined. Being so close to him right now, so far removed from your past, so far away from home, disrupts your carefully constructed sense of self. Suddenly, you don’t know who you are anymore and you don’t know who he is, or how you both fit in the life that you have painstakingly designed without him.

 

He makes you feel the way you did when you were little - when you would meticulously build a castle out of blocks and he would knock it down just to be a rotten little shit. You were torn between wanting to punch the fucker in his smug face and wanting to smack yourself for building something so elaborate in his presence knowing full well that Draco would just destroy it.

 

Right now you are overcome with the same exact conflicting emotions. You drag him out of the café and onto the dusty, crowded street, half expecting to get into a physical altercation.

 

“Why are you here, Draco?” you repeat impatiently.

 

He gives you a vague answer. _I just needed to see you_. You want to be incensed. Does he fancy himself so entitled that he has the right to just see you whenever he wants, regardless of how it might hurt you?

 

You demand to know why. Why _now_ , after a whole year of not speaking to one another followed by a solid four years of not seeing each other, for a total of five years of trying to move on.

 

He doesn’t have an answer for you, despite the way his mouth opens and closes in a muddled stutter. But the Draco you knew _always_ had an answer – it might have been sarcastic or untrue, but he had an answer for everything. The fact that he can’t immediately fling a response at you makes you question his mental state. You loosen your grip on his arm and your anger fades as quickly as it had surged up. And you find yourself with all that guilt you had been trying so hard to shake over the years.

 

You realize that you have no right to be upset that Draco found you. You are the one that left. You are the one who abandoned him and left him to die amongst the Death Eaters. He should be bitter and resentful and angry that you turned your back on him in favor of selfish, hedonistic pursuits while he stayed behind to scramble for his life, to go half mad in a prison cell, to be splayed open for the public and the law to dissect, to give up pieces of himself for the “good” of his family until all that was left was a mere shell of a man.

 

You would not blame him if he were here to enact some sort of vengeance. You deserve it. But that doesn’t mean you’ll let him have it – you worked too hard on this castle to let Draco destroy it.

 

“I’ve been trying to forget you for a long time, Draco,” you say. It comes out much less resentful than you had intended because you suddenly find that it hurts to say these words.   “And if you’re here for some stupid selfish reason, then just go. I don’t want to hear it.”

 

 

In the seconds that pass in thick silence, you think back to the days of playing with blocks in Draco’s room. He was never the little shit you wanted to believe he was. For it was never his sole intention to anger you when he would destroy your castles. Deep down inside, you have always known that Draco destroyed the things you built because it kept you there longer. You’d always rebuild those castles over and over until you both grew bored of blocks and moved on to playing something else. If he let the castles stand, you’d leave him sooner, grow bored of him sooner, and move on to _someone_ else. He just wanted you to stay.

 

 

Draco tells you that he’s never been able to forget you either and you expect this is the moment when he calls you out on all of your shit – how you were his best friend his whole life until the moment he needed you most – how you returned to London and never bothered to see him, even when you reconnected with all your other mutual friends. You expect him to say that he’s never forgotten what you did to him.

 

But he doesn’t. He smiles - not that smug _go-fuck-yourself_ grin that he always had as a teenager – but a genuine smile. And if you didn’t know him better, you’d think that unshed tears are what’s causing the glassy look in his eyes, not the diesel fumes and dust that hang thickly in the air.

 

Your hand falls away and you move to step back because you don’t know this person that stands before you – this man with a refined sense of style who wears real emotions on his sleeve as well as he wears his designer suit – this man you once knew as a boy who wore arrogance as armor and an emotionless façade as a mask.

 

You don’t recognize this version of Draco Malfoy. But his arms quickly swallow you up in an embrace and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you love him. You have never stopped loving him. When your arms curl around him, he doesn’t recoil. And you wonder if he has loved you this whole time.

 

“Why’d you wait so long?” you ask, sounding like a lost child.

 

He says something about finding himself and you understand him completely.

 

The castle that took you five years to build begins to crumble. The rubble falls around you in piles of regret and puddles of tears. But you are not mourning over the wreckage of your life. And just like you always had, you pretend to be angry with Draco for knocking down your castle, even though you were never nearly as upset with him as a child as you had wanted him to believe.

 

“I really hate you,” you say without any real malice behind it and you both laugh.

 

It comes as a shock when Draco kisses you. You are rigid in his arms for but a moment. In that moment, you fleetingly worry that this is the killing blow, when Draco will pull away and destroy you beyond recognition. But his lips remain firmly on yours and they somehow taste exactly the way they did when he was fifteen and it reduces you to the same lovesick boy you apparently never stopped being.

 

You may not know this version of Draco, who kisses you on the street without shame, but you want to know him. You want to know every inch of the man that’s kissing you; know him as intimately as the seams of his suit know him. You want to know his pain and his sorrow, even if it hurts you. You want to know what makes him smile and what makes him moan. And you want him to know you as well as the pages of your journal know you – you will share your story with him in the days to come, every beautiful road you traveled and every sketchy alley you turned down, both literally and proverbially.

 

By the time your hand slips into his and you pull him back into the café, your castle is completely destroyed. You couldn’t be happier.


	2. Chapter 2

_Marrakesh, 2 March 2001_

_Yesterday, I wrote that a man could find his true self in North Africa. Indeed, North Africa is where I was found. But it was not solely my discovery to make. I wrote that I was bound to nothing but to my own soul. And yet I find that the strings of my past are still tethering my soul to another._

_Yesterday, Draco found me._

_In Café Mogadar, we talked for hours as I smoked through an entire packet of cigarettes while he slowly nursed cup after cup of mint tea. And when the proprietor, a friendly man named Javaad, closed the café as the horns blared from the minarets for the fifth call to prayer, Draco and I took to the streets. We walked aimlessly, losing our way and finding it again several times until being on foot lost its appeal. And by the end of the night, we still hadn’t shared every story there was to share, hadn’t aired every grievance that needed to be aired. There was still so much unspoken that hung thickly between us like the fog of our beloved London._

_I noticed that Draco has this nervous habit. I wonder if he is even aware of it. He absently twists the ring on his left hand every time an uncomfortable silence falls between us, which had occurred often – such a reunion could hardly be expected to go on painlessly._

_I’m not an idiot. I know the significance of the positioning of that ring, conspicuously circling his fourth finger. And Draco knows that I know. But he hasn’t talked about it. I haven’t brought it up. It isn’t my place to force him to speak about things before he’s ready._

_It is easy to laugh and cry and argue and reconnect all night like old friends, conveniently ignoring the fact that Draco belongs to somebody else. So very far removed from the sounds and sights and smells and biting cold of England, it is easy for Draco to BE somebody else._

_Because I know the moves of an escapist all too well, I recognize that I am just a means of escape. I know what it is to run away from life, to lose myself inside somebody else. I understand that there is little else that I can be for Draco but an escape. Though I am perhaps selfish and stupid enough not to care._

_When the talking stopped, we kissed. We kissed under cover of a dark alley and it was not the chill of the desert night that made me shiver. With every kiss, I was reborn. With every kiss, I also died. Because I am still in love with Draco Malfoy, even though I have no right to love him. And because I want to take everything Draco wants to give me – everything I have no right to take._

_Perhaps Draco has already made his choice – he probably wouldn’t be here, in my bed, if he hadn’t. I cannot make MY choice with a clear conscience. Choosing Draco means I choose to ruin a life – be it Astoria Malfoy’s life (oh how it makes my hand shake bitterly to write that name!) or Draco’s life. I’m an arsehole – I always have been and always will be – so I will let Draco make that choice for me. And maybe I can feel a little better about ruining lives._

You write this in your journal by the light of the orange glow of dawn in the Moroccan skies, sitting in the elaborately tiled courtyard of the cheap hotel you’ve been staying in. The city is just beginning to wake up, but you never slept. Draco is in your room, sleeping more restfully than he has in years. You were in bed with him, marveling at how little his face actually changed, admiring how sleep softened his lines, exactly the way you watched Draco sleeping in your bed in Luckington Manor when you were both fifteen – before the world went to hell and took him with it.

 

But unlike then, you have this compulsion to keep moving. Staying too long in one place with one person makes you itch. You never want to stick around long enough to get hurt. However, Draco isn’t just _anybody_. You’ve been wanting him and agonizing over him since the age of fourteen. But you still don’t want to be there when he wakes up and realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. So you wrote a note on a hotel postcard you’d picked up in Casablanca, stuck it in the front pocket of Draco’s jacket that hung on a chair, and quietly snuck out of the room with the one bag you had.

 

 

_Draco,_

_I know why you left England. In essence, I left England for the same reason._

_There are paths that have been made for each of us - paths gouged deeply into the earth by our fathers before us and their fathers before them and so on. Our ancestors intended for our paths to be parallel. They were never meant to be one in the same._

_But you know me better than anyone and you know that I was never going to take the well-worn path. I’ve burned that path and I am forging one for myself. In truth, my path is not apparent until I look back and see where I’ve been. I don’t really know where I’m going until I get there. I never do._

_If you want to come along with me and travel on my path for a while, I would not say no to your company. We can forge a path together for as little or as long as we can._

_If you’d rather not break promises and burn the bridge you crossed to get to Marrakesh, then go home. I won’t blame you for it. I know you left behind much more than I did when I took my leave of England._

_If you’re up for an adventure, meet me in Casablanca. I won’t wait long._

_Love always,_

_Theodore_

You never even get the opportunity to leave Marrakesh for Casablanca. You stuff your journal into your bag and wait in the courtyard for the car that Javaad had kindly hired for you. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this particular driver had never been on time to pick you up for excursions around the city.

 

When you look up from your watch, Draco is standing there in just his shirt and his trousers, holding the postcard. He’s still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when he drawls lazily around a yawn, “Come back to bed, arsehole. We’re not done here.”

 

You just have to laugh.   Draco made his choices. He wasn’t about to back out now. And you weren’t going anywhere without him as long as he had a say in it.

 

You heft your bag over your shoulder and follow him back up to your hotel room, ready to build another castle. But this time, you’ll build it with Draco. He’ll no longer be a spectator, biding his time before he ruins your creation. He’ll lay down some blocks, and you’ll stack some on top. And if the thing that you make together turns out ugly, you won’t feel as bad when you both knock it down and start again.


	3. Chapter 3

“I chased you to the other hemisphere of the Earth,” Draco begins, too tired to really sound indignant, “and you wanted me to run around all of bloody North Africa to find you again?”

 

Your bag slides off your shoulder and hits the floor with a muted thud, allowing you to shrug your shoulders. “I like playing hard to get,” you joke with a wry grin.

 

He flops back onto the bed and splays his arms out with a deep sigh. “I think I’ve got you beat at that game.”

 

“Five years is a long time to be playing hard to get,” you reply, absent of bitterness.

 

The laces of your Doc Martens magically come undone, allowing you to slip out of them easily. Your jacket lands on top of your bag and you crawl onto the bed, nestling next to Draco like it is something you have been doing for ages – it feels that natural.

 

You bury your face in the side of his neck. He smells expensive. He smells like home. And you feel stupid for trying to run away from this man again. Granted, you’d been scared. You are more familiar with the sting of his rejection than the feel of his arms. Deep down inside you know that you will never be able to escape his gravitational pull ever again.

 

“Not done with me yet, hm?” you mumble hotly against his skin and perceive a slight shiver beneath your lips, which makes you smile.

 

“Why? Are you done with _me_ already?” Draco asks facetiously, though you think you detect just a hint of honest concern in his voice.

 

“Not even close,” you whisper. You suddenly feel the sleepless night catching up to you. And even though the sun is coming through the slats in the louvered shutters, casting orange lines of warmth across the room, all you want to do is fade into this man beside you.

 

 

When you wake up in the afternoon, the room is hot and dry as an oven, and you’re drenched in sweat. Draco isn’t where he’d been when you inadvertently passed out on him. But his suit is in a carefully folded pile on a chair with his shoes beneath. The bathroom door is shut and you hear the sound of the shower running softly behind it.

 

The thought of Draco naked and wet in the other room rouses you from grogginess. The prospect of him coming out of the shower to retrieve his clothes makes your pulse race. The idea of thwarting his efforts to get dressed makes you downright hard in your jeans that you never took off.

 

But you’re still getting used to the idea of even being allowed to kiss him. Anything beyond that still seems intangible. You don’t feel like you are entitled to any part of him. So you exhale deeply and try to scrub the fantasy of Draco’s naked body from your closed eyes with your palms.

 

There’s an itch in the back of your throat and you know that the only way to quell it is to have that first cigarette of the day. It is the perfect excuse to escape. You know that if you stay, you won’t be able to keep your hands off Draco when he steps out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. And you two still have a lot to talk about before you even entertain the idea of sex, because he means so much more to you than all the lovers you have ever had.

 

You don’t bother with shoes. Besides, you need to leave a sign of your imminent return. Just as you step out of your hotel room and into the exterior corridor, Draco comes out of the bathroom.

 

“If you keep running away from me, you’re going to give me an abandonment complex,” Draco drawls jokingly.

 

You pause in the doorway. “Relax, Draco. I’m only going to feed an addiction,” you say without even turning around as you flash the cigarette wedged between your fingers.

 

“I don’t mind if you smoke in here. Just open the windows,” he says.

 

You hesitate in the doorway, lingering a little too long as your heart fights with the rest of your sexually compulsive self.

 

“Or run away. Your choice,” he adds coolly after your pregnant pause.

 

“Draco, I’m not--,” you begin to explain as you turn around. But you don’t finish your thought because Draco is standing in your room with a towel wrapped around his waist, and the sight of him is so startling that it renders you speechless.

 

It is but a fleeting glance, but it is all you need to see before you make a hasty retreat out the door. “Be right back.”

 

The last time you saw Draco without clothes, you were in the Slytherin dorms and he looked downright unhealthy – you remember being able to see every one of his vertebrae through the nearly translucent skin on his hunched back – the ravages of being too worried to eat or sleep. You remember feeling so sad and fearful for him that it made you lose sleep too.

 

Draco is not that grotesquely skinny boy anymore. The passing years and genetics have been extremely generous to him. You try to smoke away your desire and the lingering image of Draco’s perfectly sculpted, nearly nude form. With every pull of smoke filling your lungs, you exhale the urge to turn around and ravage the fuck out of the lithe Adonis that somehow ended up in your room.

 

He steps out into the corridor fully dressed and says, “We’re staying at _my_ hotel tonight. Mine has the decency of providing hot water.”

 

That’s when you realize that the arsehole could have easily gone back to his hotel for a warm shower, but chose to take a cold one in your room. You want to read into that, but you try not to entertain the idea that Draco is doing anything but trying to reconcile with you.

 

This Draco is familiar to you – the one that always calls the shots regardless of your proclivity to do whatever the fuck you want anyway – the Draco that is outwardly in charge but inwardly unable to control anything.


End file.
